As processing speeds in central processing units of electronic computors has been increased, high speed printers of the terminal units must be operated at higher speeds.
As well known, a variety of types of high speed printers are available. Among them the present invention is concerned with a dot printer for printing dot matrix characters, numerals, symbols or the like simultaneously, each of which is arranged in a row, while a plurality of dot printing elements are reciprocally displaced in the direction of the row, said dot printing elements being arranged in line in said direction at predetermined distances.
This type of printer for expressing characters or the like, such as the dot matrix, wire dot printer, thermal printer and others are widely known. For instance, a wire dot printer is provided with a plurality of printing solenoids on a slide member, each of which is disposed opposite to a platen and a printing paper. The slide member is adapted to be moved in a reciprocal manner in parallel with the printing paper. With such arrangement for the wire dot printer, printing is performed by displacement of the slide member as a primary scan operation and the feeding movement of the printing paper as a secondary scan operation, so as to print simultaneously a plurality of dot matrix characters which are located in a row.
Further to the above arrangement of the dot printer, there is provided a wire which is connected to said printing solenoid extending toward an ink ribbon. When the solenoid is excited, the wire is displaced to depress the ink ribbon against the printing paper so that a dot is printed thereon.
Usually the slide member is reciprocally moved with the aid of a motor as a power source for driving, wherein rotary motion is converted into linear motion by way of a suitable transmission mechanism.